The mountain wind carried a new bite, sharp and thin. It swept through Qinghe's narrow paths, stirring dust and dry leaves. The fields lay bare, harvest done. The river ran low and quiet. Everything looked familiar, but the scale felt wrong. Smaller. Or perhaps he was simply larger.
Yan Shen stood before his home, a single pack on his shoulder. His robe was the same, but it hung differently on his frame. The fabric pulled taut across shoulders that had grown dense with power, not muscle. His hair, longer now, was tied back. His posture was a straight, quiet line. His stillness had an edge to it. Even motionless, he looked poised to act. To vanish.
His feet pressed into the earth with a firmness that threatened to crack the ground. His breath came in rhythms too measured and controlled. The world seemed to acknowledge his new weight.
He had learned his new body's abilities. Strength that could shatter stone. Speed that blurred perception. Flight that defied the heavens. He had flown only three times. The memory of whats above the clouds, still haunts him.
(see chapter 41)
That morning, before leaving, he sat in the garden. This was the patch of dirt where he and Lanlan had debated everything from worms to Qi circulation. The old pine still leaned its familiar slant. Their chipped wooden bowl, used for tossing pebbles, still sat crooked in the soil.
He unrolled her letter. He had read it a hundred times. The words were burned into his mind.
The mountains here are white in the morning. Elder Mei taught me a new internal flow. I've passed two threshold tests. I think I'm doing okay. I'm about to step into the Body Refinement Realm.
The handwriting was neat. Precise. It was a report, not a letter. There were no jokes. No doodles in the margins. No teasing insults. The girl he knew was absent from the ink. Each sentence felt careful. Measured. Written and rewritten until all that remained was what was safe.
"Safe for who?" The question was a quiet breath on the cold air.
He turned the page over. Checked the edges. Felt for hidden Qi seals or pressed characters. Nothing. The silence was more telling than any words. It was a wall.
He had written back. Told her about the turning leaves. The pine needles. How Xue was starting to talk in her sleep. There had been no answer. No pause. Just absence. Something around her had changed, and it was already stealing her voice.
He folded the letter with care and tucked it into an inner pocket of his pack, close to his chest. A secret to carry.
"I'll find you," he said to the quiet garden. "Even if someone doesn't want me to."
His mother, Li Meiyan, approached. She placed a cloth pouch in his hand. It held dried roots, warming herbs, a sprig of hawthorn. "You don't have to write often," she said, brushing a stray lock of hair from his face. Her touch was gentle. "Just don't forget your meals."
His father, Yan Bao, waited at the gate, leaning on his cane. He said nothing for a long time. His eyes were on the distant mountain path. Then, without turning his head, he spoke.
"Don't show off. Don't chase glory. Listen more than you speak. And if something feels wrong… don't convince yourself it isn't."
The advice was hard, earned from a life of experience. Yan Shen bowed low, lower than he ever had before. It was a bow of respect, of understanding.
He bent and kissed his little sister, Yan Xue. She giggled, waving her small arms, her two tiny teeth showing. He did not cry. But something inside him tightened. A final, solid knot of resolve.
"I'll be back," he promised them. "A little stronger. That's all."
The stone trail began just past the last farm. It coiled upward into the mist and pine, a road for pilgrims and hopefuls. Not the hidden path of the inner sect, but the common one. Today, it was crowded.
Dozens of young men and women walked the path. They came from valleys and villages, dressed in new robes, their voices loud with excitement and nervous energy. They shared food, pointed at shapes in the clouds, traded wild stories of what lay ahead.
Yan Shen walked alone.
Behind him, Qinghe vanished into the fog. Ahead, the sect gates waited.
He passed a group of boys deep in speculation.
"I heard the inner disciples meditate on jade platforms."
"My cousin says they only take those with noble blood now."
"I'm not leaving without a Dao companion," one boasted with a grin.
Another laughed. "You can have the alchemists. I want a sword cultivator."
They were loud. Innocent. Foolish. Yan Shen moved past them without a sound. They didn't notice him.
The path climbed. The air thinned. The sky opened above, a clear, sharp white.
Then he saw it.
The outer gates of Verdant Willow Pavilion. They were tall, made of ancient, weathered stone, elegant and imposing. Untouched by time.
Yan Shen's fingers brushed the edge of his pack, feeling the shape of Lanlan's letter beneath the cloth.
Still no reply.
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"I'll find you," he whispered, the words swallowed by the wind. "Even if you've forgotten how to find yourself."
He stepped through the archway.
And for a single, suspended moment, everything shifted.
The air died. The sounds of the other aspirants, the wind, the distant birds- all of it vanished. Replaced by a profound, heavy silence. A pressure descended, not on his body, but on his very spirit. It was a sensation of being measured. Scanned. A gaze from nowhere, from the mountain itself, turning its attention upon him.
Then, as suddenly as it came, it was gone.
Yan Shen didn't flinch. He didn't startle. He simply tilted his head upward, his eyes taking in the grand peaks and structures ahead. He breathed in slowly, the air cool in his lungs.
"So it begins."
The stories were real. The spirit halls, the sects, the cultivators who were more than human. This was not a tale in a book. This was a real sect, with its own rules, its own power, its own secrets.
And he was now walking its road. Not as a visitor. Not as a follower.
Just one more name on their list.
For now.